So sánh câu đơn trong ngữ pháp truyền thống với cú đơn trong ngữ pháp chức năng hệ thống

Of the grammatical approaches, traditional grammar TG considers sentence as the largest unit in the grammatical system of a language, and the study of grammar is primarily concentratedar

TABLE OF CONTENTS

General Introduction 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scopes of the study 2

4 Methods of the study 2

5 Design of the study 4

chapter I: general conceptualization 5

1.1 Introduction 5

1.2 A brief history of grammatical study 5

1.3 Traditional grammar 7

1.4 Systemic Functional grammar 10

1.5 Some differences between SFG and TG 12

Chapter II: The simple sentence in traditional grammar 16

2.1 Introduction 16

2.2 Structural criteria 17

2.2.1 Principal parts of the setence – subject and predicate 18

2.2.2 Sentence elements syntactically defined 20

2.2.3 Basic clause patterns 21

2.3 Logico-semantic criteria 22

2.4 Communicative criteria 25

2.5 Phonological and orthographic criteria 27

2.6 Summary 28

Chapter III: The clause in systemic functional grammar 30

3.1 Introduction 30

3.2 Clause - the crucial unit in systemic functional grammar 30

3.3 Three ways of interpreting clause 31

3.3.1 Clause as representation : experiential metafunction 31

3.3.1.1 Transitivity 31

3.3.1.2 Types of process 33

3.3.1.3 Circumstances 38

3.3.2 Clause as exchange : interpersonal metafunction 39

3.3.2.1 Characterization of Mood 39

3.3.2.2 Overall interpersonal organization of the clause 41

3.3.2.3 Structure of the Mood element 42

3.3.2.4 Residue 44

3.3.2.5 Modality 45

3.3.2.6 Mood system in English and Vietnamese: a brief comparison 46

3.3.3 Clause as message : textual metafunction 48

3.3.3.1 Thematic structure 48

3.3.3.2 Boundary of theme 49

3.3.3.3 Types of theme 51

3.3.3.4 Markness 54

3.3.3.5 Implications of Theme for level of textual structure 56

3.4 Simultaneous metafunctions in the clause 56

3.5 Summary 58

Chapter IV: comparison 59

4.1 The similarities between the sentence and the clause 59

4.2 The differences between the sentence and the clause 60

CONCLUSION 68

General Introduction

1 Rationale

The history of linguistics has seen the endless development of different approaches,each of which defines its own tasks, scopes and objectives Of the grammatical

approaches, traditional grammar (TG) considers sentence as the largest unit in the

grammatical system of a language, and the study of grammar is primarily concentratedaround the study of sentence Because of its earlier foundation, traditional grammar haslargely influenced on linguistics in general and on language teaching in particular inseveral parts of the world, including Vietnam For a long time, sentence has been themain content of grammar teaching at schools As a result, the concept of sentence hasbecome very familiar to many people Until recently, there has witnessed the flourish

of systemic functional grammar (SFG) during the late 20th century and its greatinfluence on language research and teaching Among the units recognized for study in

functional grammar, clause represents as a crucial one.

Clause description has been found not only in English but also in Vietnamese althoughthe studies on Vietnamese clause are found in a small number Since functional

grammar is still new in Vietnam, the term clause has often been confused and misunderstood, even some linguists argue that the term sentence should be used instead of the clause Therefore, the questions to ask would be “What does the clause

really mean?”, “Is it completely the same as the sentence in traditional grammar?”

The thesis aims at exploring the notion of sentence in traditional grammar and clause

in functional grammar, at the same time making comparison between them to see inwhat ways they are similar and different

2 Aims of the study

Within the framework of an MA thesis the study aims to:

- investigate how the sentence in English and Vietnamese is conceptualized and

described in traditional grammar

- investigate how the clause in English and Vietnamese is conceptualized and

described in functional grammar

- compare and comment on similarities and differences between the two approaches inconceptual and descriptive terms

3 Scopes of the study

This study deals with comparison between the sentence in TG and the clause in SFG,

with concentration on the investigation of the simple sentence in TG and its counterpart

in SFG - the clause simplex

4 Methods of the study

To fulfill the aims of the study, the main methods used for study are generalized, descriptive and comparative Firstly, a generalization will be made to provide an

overlook on TG and SFG The descriptive and comparative are primarily concernedwith the description and the comparison of the sentence and the clause The descriptionwill be illustrated with the two languages: English and Vietnamese Examples areselected from different sources, but primarily from short stories in English andVietnamese Examples from grammar books written by famous grammarians are alsotaken as the source for illustration

Although both English and Vietnamese are taken as source languages, English isadopted to be the main reference source The reason for this adoption is that English isthe language which has been most extensively and comprehensively described in manyparts of the world under the framework of both traditional and systemic functionalapproaches

The description of the sentence in the second chapter is based on the categories and

definitions in various traditional studies, but mainly in Quirk et al (1985), Leech & Svartvik (1975), Cobuild (1991), Delahunty & Garvey (1994) The description of

clause is mostly based on the model given in Halliday (1994) Works by some other

systemic functional linguists are also consulted, including Downing and Locke (1992), Morley (2000), Bloor (1994), Eggins (1994), etc The invaluable reference sources in Vietnamese include the following publications: TrÇn Träng Kim (1941), Tr¬ng V¨n Ch×nh & NguyÔn HiÕn Lª (1963), NguyÔn Kim Th¶n (1964), Hoµng Träng PhiÕn (1980), Lª CËn et al (1983), DiÖp Quang Ban (1986), Cao Xu©n H¹o (1991), Hoµng V¨n V©n (2002), DiÖp Quang Ban (2004) Apart from those publications named above,

other studies are also consulted when necessary

5 Design of the study

The study is organized around three parts: introduction, main content and conclusion

Introduction – presents the rationale of the study, the aims of the study,

scopes of the study and methods of the study

Chapter One – General Conceptualization – is concerned with the

theoretical preliminaries: the framework of TG and SFG for describing thesentence and the clause

Chapter Two - The Simple Sentence in Traditional Grammar – investigates

how the sentence is conceptualized and described in TG

Chapter Three – The Clause Simplex in Systemic Functional Grammar –

investigates how the clause is conceptualized and described in SFG

Chapter Four - Comparison – draws out the similarities and differences

between the sentence and the clause

Conclusion - summarizes the main points discussed in the thesis and offers

implications of the study and some suggestions for further research

chapter I general conceptualization

1.1 Introduction

This chapter is concerned with the theoretical preliminaries for the study The firstattempt is made to sketch out a brief history of grammatical study After that, we shallgeneralize the most fundamental issues concerned with traditional grammar and

systemic functional grammar The last part of the chapter is devoted to the comparison

to explore the distinguishing features of these two grammar schools

1.2 A brief history of grammatical study

The study of grammar was initiated by the ancient Greeks, who engaged inphilosophical speculation about languages and described language structure Thisgrammatical tradition was passed on to the Romans, who adopted the terminology andcategories in Greek grammar to describe Latin This type of grammar was thenreceived and continued in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by the Europeansociety, and lasted until the rise of modern linguistics in the twentieth century This

study of grammar is known as traditional grammar.

In addition, by the Middle Ages, European scholars generally knew, in addition to theirown languages and Latin, the languages of their nearest neighbours This access toseveral languages sets scholars to discovering that languages can be compared with one

another This discovery was the origin of later comparative philosophy In the 18th

century, the scholars developed systemic analyses to compare Sanskrit with German,Greek, Latin, etc This writing of grammar is known as Indo-European grammar – amethod of comparing and relating the forms of speech in numerous languages

Not until the early 20th did grammarians begin to describe languages on their own

terms Noteworthy in this regard were Boas’ and Jesperson’s works Jesperson’s A Modern English Grammar (1909) was the precursor of such current approaches to linguistic theory as transformational generative grammar Boas’s Handbook of American languages formed the basis of various types of American descriptive grammar Given impetus by the fresh perspective of Boas, which saw grammar as

description of how human speech in a language is organized, the approach to grammarknown as descriptive linguistics became dominant in the U.S during the first half of the20th century

At the same time, there was another approach to grammar in which descriptivelinguistics developed precise and rigorous methods to describe the formal structuralunits in the spoken aspect of any language The grammar that developed with this view

is known as structural grammar A structuralist grammar describes what relationships

underlie all instances of speech in a particular language (what Saussure referred to as

langue and parole).

By the mid-20th century, Noam Chomsky developed the generative grammar A

generative grammar is a formal grammar that can in some sense “generate” the formed expressions of a natural language His universal theories are related to the ideas

well-of those 18th and early 19th century grammarians who urged that grammar beconsidered a part of logic – a key to analyzing thought

In the history of grammatical study, there have always existed two opposite variables

in the way grammars are written: functional and formal Although there are many

cross-currents with insights borrowed from one to the other, they are ideologically

fairly different Functional grammar is the name given to any of a range of

functionally–based approaches to the scientific study of language such as thegrammar model of the Prague school, The Copenhagen school, or the grammar modeldeveloped by Simon Dik

A modern approach to combining accurate descriptions of the grammatical patterns of

language with their function in context is that of systemic functional grammar, an

approach originally developed by Michael A.K Halliday in the 1960s and now pursued

in all continents Systemic functional grammar is related to the older functionaltraditions of European schools of linguistics as British Contextualism and the Pragueschools

1.3 Traditional grammar

By traditional, grammar is usually used to refer to the grammar written by classical

Greek scholars, the Roman grammars largely derived from the Greek tradition, thespeculative work of the medieval and the prescriptive approach in the 18th century Thelabel is also applied to the grammars largely presented in school textbooks for bothnative and foreign language teaching that take the terminology from this tradition.Because of its pedagogical implication, traditional grammar is also labeled as “schoolgrammar” or “pedagogical grammar”

Traditional grammar is criticized by a great many of modern linguists, especially thelinguists of structural approach for certain reasons The term is often used with clearunsupportive connotations reflecting the overtly prescriptive orientation of the schooltextbooks The grammar is also criticized for its lack of a scientific approach forlanguage study; i.e it based largely on intuition about grammatical meaning ratherthan an overall theory or model of grammar Also, the grammar is criticized for beingatomistic and limited in scope

Although there has been much of criticism on traditional grammar, it should not beforgotten that traditional grammar represents the fruits of more than two thousandyears of serious grammatical investigation, resulting in a great deal of grammaticalterminology, many concepts and categories which are still widely used in the currenttheories of grammar, in textbooks and other resources on language Dinneen (1967)pointed out that one of the possible virtues of traditional grammar is the fact that it isthe most wide-spread, influential, and the best understood method of discussing Indo-European languages in the Western world Indeed, a great many of traditionalgrammarians have provided invaluable source material and descriptive insights into thegrammar of English Noteworthy in the regard are Curme (1931-1935), Sweet (1891-98), Zandvolt (1972), and so on Even certain contemporary approaches, such as that

presented in Quirk et al (1985), can also be characterized as traditional in their

outlook, even though they are considerably more linguistically sophisticated thanearlier descriptions (Trask, 1999)

With regard to the background of Vietnamese grammatical study, it is not exaggerated

to say that, in the early period (1850- 1935), most of Vietnamese grammariansprofoundly adopted the model of grammar given by their conquered French scholars.(H V V©n, 2002) Since 1930 on, the study of grammar has extensively influenced byEnglish grammar, French grammar and Russian grammar Until recently, a great many

of grammarians have still taken traditional grammar as the basic model for their study.Through out of the country, a mass of grammatical textbooks written under traditionalperspective is used in schools for all levels, from primary to university education

The sentence is taken as a crucial grammatical unit Study of syntax, which meansstudy of sentence, is primarily concerned with definition of sentence, classification ofsentence types and identification of sentence elements In the twentieth century,language teaching continues to be formed on the word as the minimal unit and thesentence as the maximal A typical work on grammar is traditionally divided into twoparts, the first of which deals with parts of speech and the rest is often devoted todescribing the sentence

Apart from the concepts related to parts of speech, traditional grammar developed agreat deal of grammatical terminologies, including the terminology that refers to

grammatical units (words, phrases, clauses, sentences), the terminology that refers to clause elements (subject, predicate, object, direct object, indirect object, complement, adverbial, transitivity, intransitivity, intensive, etc.), and the one that refers to categories such as gender, number, person, tense, mood, case, inflection, aspect, voice, relative, subordinate, dependent, independent and so on These sets of terminology are

familiar in current linguistic theories

In summary, traditional grammar is a label applied loosely to the range of attitudes andmethods found in the period of grammatical study before the advent of linguisticscience The term “traditional grammar” is generally pejoratively used by modern

linguists, identifying an unscientific approach to grammatical study in which languageswere analyzed in terms of Latin, with insufficient regard for empirical facts In currentbackground, despite the fact that modern linguists reject it, traditional grammar is stillthe backbone of the grammar instruction given to the general population.

1.4 Systemic Functional grammar

Systemic functional grammar was originally articulated by M.A.K Halliday in the1960s and has now come to be recognized as a major force in linguistics

Halliday, in Introduction to Functional Grammar, explains that his grammar is

functional because the conceptual framework on which it is based is a functional onerather than a formal one For Halliday, a language is “a system of meaning” becausewhen people use language, their language acts are the expressions of meaning Fromthis point of view, the grammar becomes a study of how meanings are built up throughthe wording The basic principle in Halliday’s functional grammar is that it approachesthe language from a semantic point of view; more precisely, it examines the semanticfunctions of the language forms The basic functions (metafunctions, such asideational, interpersonal and textual function) around which Halliday’s theory is built,exist in all languages since these reflect the fundamental role of the human language ingeneral When we communicate and use a language as a means of communication, werely on both our experience of reality and the world as well as on the experience ofprevious generations throughout history The other important objective of using thelanguage is that we want to say something to someone, to another person, and we can

do this if we continuously refer our message to the context in which the participants ofthe particular discourse are involved Although different languages can realize thesefunctions in different ways, there are universal features of all languages From thisview, language is a resource for making meaning; so, ‘grammar is a resource forcreating meaning in the form of wording’ (Halliday & Matthiessen, forth coming)

In the history of thinking about language, there are two somewhat different theoreticalperspectives Some linguists have approached the study of language with account forformal aspects of the grammar largely divorced from meanings They started bylooking at words and sentences (language forms) and then asking how the forms of thelanguage represent meaning For Halliday, the only approach to the construction ofgrammars that is likely to be successful will be one that recognizes meaning and use ascentral features of language It follows from this use that Halliday’s grammar is

semantic (concerned with meaning), and functional (concerned with how the language

is used)

The systemic functional approach is increasingly being recognized as providing a veryuseful descriptive and interpretive framework for viewing language as strategic, meaning-making resources

(Eggins, 1991:1)

Systemic functional grammar is concerned primarily with the choices that are made

available to speakers of a language by their grammatical systems These choices areassumed to be meaningful and related speaker’s intentions to the concrete forms of alanguage The name “system grammar” is derived from the fact that a language is seen

as being a huge, integrated series of system networks of meaning potential This

potential gives us a framework within which it makes sense to compare differentchoices According to Halliday, every choice in a system is realized by a syntagmatic

structure A structure is a linear configuration of slots filled by some functional

elements; i.e syntagmatic relations give structures While the systemic approach givestheoretical priority to paradigmatic relations, “its formalism through the systemnetwork, captures both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations” (Eggins, 1994: 213)

1.5 Some differences between SFG and TG

1.5.1, Theory of language and linguistics

The first typical difference between the two grammars can be found from the privilege

to the choices of dichotomy between langue and parole (Saussure), competence and communication (Labov), potential and actual (Halliday) or system and instance

(Halliday) While formal linguists treat the concepts in each pair as the oppositions ofeach other, and they take the former ones (language, competence, system etc) as theobjective which linguistics should aim at Functional systemic linguists consider thetwo concepts as equally important roles in defining what language is and whatlinguistics is Language, in SFG is not something that is independent of the instance ofuse; language is really and only unfolds its meanings through the context in which it isused Halliday claims that his grammar is at once both a grammar of the system and agrammar of the text (instance) of language use.

We follow Saussure in his understanding of the relationship between the system of language and its instantiation in acts of speaking; although not in his implied conclusion, that once the text has been used as evidence for the system, it can be dispensed with - it has served its purpose.

(Halliday, 1994: xxii)

Because systemic linguists put attention to both the systems of language and language

in use (instance of use), their grammar simultaneously accounts for not only wordings(as the formal grammar schools) but also meanings (as the other functional grammarschools)

1.5.2 Syntagmatic grammar and paradigmatic grammar

In TG, language is a set of rules , rules for specifying structures; so grammar is a set ofrules for specifying structures, which are made up smaller elements, such as theconstruction of a transitive sentence with “verb + object” The grammar is itselfsyntagmatic oriented In contrast to formal grammar, SFG is paradigmatic inorientation It interprets a language as a network of relations (systems of choices from

the paradigms) with structures coming in as the realization of these relationships It

takes semantics as the foundation; hence “the grammar is natural, and so to be organized around the text, or discourse” (Halliday, 1994).

1.5.3 Descriptive vs prescriptive grammar

Although traditional grammar and prescriptive grammar are not entirely the same thing, there is a large overlap between them TG is thought as the set of descriptive concepts used by nearly all prescriptive works on grammar For the readers with

background in TG, grammar equates with the study of how people should talk or write correctly The grammar is viewed in terms of “rights” or “wrongs” It is prescriptive or normative by the ways that its aim is to provide rules for correcting what are often referred to as grammatical errors

On the contrary, SFG is not a prescriptive grammar but a kind of descriptive grammar

It accounts for how people actually use language In SFG, degree of appropriacy isassessed not on terms of grammatical rules but relevant choices in certain contexts It

is a grammar which can relate the system of all possible choices (the total grammatical

potential of a language) to the grammatical choices made when language is used within a particular context (how the potential is actualized) in specific contexts of

use) SFG linguists are not interested in making judgments about whether peopleshould or should not use this or that structure They simply describe the grammar thatenables language users to do what they do Therefore, SFG is evaluated to be muchricher semantically than either formal or traditional grammar In his preface to

Introduction to Functional Grammar (1994), Halliday claims:

This book is not a textbook of English; it is an interpretation of English code No attempt is made to “teach” the categories But an attempt is made to interpret some of them, especially the difficult and important ones

(Halliday, 1994:16)

To summarize the concluding remarks we have on TG and SFG, we can say that SFG

are typically characterized by certain orientation: it is oriented towards function rather

than form, rhetoric rather than logic, text rather than sentence, resources rather than rules, meaningfulness rather than grammaticality.

The differences between the two grammars can be summarized in the table below:

Finite + Predicator / complement /circumstantial / modal adjunct /conjunctive adjunct / nominal group /verbial group

Areas covered (text>) sentence > clause >

phrase > word > morpheme

the whole communicative event:experiential, interpersonal and textualfunctions

2.1 Introduction

This chapter deals with the sentence – a very crucial unit in TG Although the termsentence seems to be so familiar to everyone, from a language learning beginner to alinguist, its definitions are hardly unanimously shared by different linguists Up tonow, it is not surprising that the definitions of sentence have reached the number ofhundreds

Because it is difficult to give a precise and satisfactory definition of sentence, somelinguists, instead of giving a definition of sentence, cautiously summarize sentence’sfeatures as follows:

- The sentence is the largest unit of grammatical organization

- The sentence is a minimal unit of communication.

- The sentence is constructed by means or certain grammatical rules

- The sentence expresses a relatively complete thought and the speaker’sattitude, evaluation, and feelings

- The sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop

From this summary, we can see that the sentence can be regarded from differentaspects of language: communication, structure, semantic and orthography In the nextstep, we will investigate how the sentence is traditionally defined and recognizedaccording to these criteria

There is a massive amount of books on grammar in general and on sentence inparticular written under the traditional framework both in English and in Vietnamese,which provide comprehensive description of the sentence There have been works thatare purely traditional but there have been also some works based on traditionalframework but combined with modern perspectives To provide a full description of thesentence in traditional grammar seems to be far from reach Therefore, in this chapter,

we will try to generalize the most typical dimensions of the sentence described bytraditional grammarians

+ A compound sentence consists of a multiple independent clauses These

clauses are joined together using conjunctions or punctuation

+ A complex sentence consists of one dependent clause with at least one

independent clause

Sentences are also classified into major sentence and minor sentence:

+A major sentence is a regular type of sentence; it has a subject and a

predicate.

We are going to leave here.

+A minor sentence is an irregular type of sentence It does not follow the grammatical rules (Hello!; How do you do?)

Sentences can also be classified into complete sentence and elliptical sentence, which

are distinguished by the presence or absence of certain elements in the sentence Inelliptical sentence, some part is ellipsed but can be restored from the context

Are you free this morning? (complete sentence)

Free this morning? (elliptical sentence)

This way of classification bases on the structural relations between the elements of the

simple sentence A simple sentence is the most basic type from which all other types of

sentences are built up It is the largest unit to which the rules of grammar apply

Delahunty and Garvey (1994) define the simple sentence as “a grammatically unifiedstructure that contains a subject and a predicate” In much similar way, Vietnameselinguist D Q Ban (1996) defines simple sentence as one consisting of only one cluster

of a subject and predicate and this cluster simultaneously plays such a role as the

‘core’ of sentence

2.2.1 Principal parts of the sentence – subject and predicate

Drawing out from the above definitions, traditionally, a complete sentence includes

two principal parts: subject and predicate However, providing an adequate definition

of the notion of a subject is difficult, and depends on a range of grammatical propertiesthat may vary from language to language For this reason, many current grammaticaltheories avoid using the term, except for purely descriptive purposes, or define it interms of occupying a particular position in the clause However, many traditionalgrammarians try to make definition of subject, and the most common definition is thatthe subject is what (whom) the sentence is about, while the predicate tells somethingabout the subject

The subject of the sentence has a close general relation to “what is being discussed”, the

“theme” of the sentence, with the normal implication that something new (the predicate) is being said about a “subject” that has already been introduced in earlier sentence.

đã sống ở đây sáu năm rồi

Chủ ngữ

(Subject)

Vị ngữ (Predicate)

Figure 2-1 (b): Parts of sentence in Vietnamese

The division of the sentence into two parts is the primary way to define the sentence.Subject and predicate are the first set of components accepted by grammarians as thecriterion to define and analyse the sentence However, the analysis of the sentence doesnot stop at these two basic components but goes further to more delicate elements

2.2.2 Sentence elements syntactically defined

According to Quirk et al (1972), the division of subject and predicate states the

general rules about the construction of sentences; it is the elementary construction At

a more delicate level, a sentence may alternatively be seen as comprising five units

called element of clause structure: subject, verb, complement, object and adverbial,abbreviated as S, V, C, O, A.

They make him the chairman every year

S V O C A

+ Subject: A subject (i) is a noun phrase or a clause with nominal function (ii) occurs

before the verb phrase in declarative clauses and immediately after operator inquestion (iii) has the number and person concord, where applicable with the verbphrase

+ Object (direct or indirect): An object (i) like a subject, is a noun phrase or clause

with nominal function (ii) normally follows the subject and the verb phrase (iii) by thepassive transformation, assumes the status of subject

+ Complement: (subject or object) A complement (i) is a noun phrase, an adjective

phrase, or a clause with nominal function (ii) follows the subject, verb phrase and (ifone is present) object (iii) does not become subject through the passive transformation

+ Adverbial: An adverbial (i) is an adverb, adverb phrase, adverbial clause, noun

phrase, or prepositional phrase (ii) is generally mobile, i.e is capable of occurring inmore than one position in the clause (iii) is generally optional, i.e may be added orremoved from a sentence without affecting its acceptability

(Quirk et al., 1985: 348-349)

Unlike English sentence, which always requires verbs as obligatory element, not all

sentences in Vietnamese include verb element (Cô ấy đẹp.; Nhà tôi xa trung tâm.).

While most English and Vietnamese traditional grammarians share the agreement onthe division of subject and predicate as well as taking it as criterion to distinguish

between simple sentence, compound sentence and complex sentence, they differ from

one another in defining subelements of sentence structures For example, D Q Ban

(1987:32) distinguishes principle components (subject and predicate) and subordinate elements ((complement (bổ ngữ), theme (đề ngữ), adjunct (phụ ngữ), conjunctive (liên

ngữ) and explanative (giải ngữ))

Quan, ng ườ i ta sợ cái uy của quyền thế

Đề ngữ Chủ ngữ Vị ngữ

(theme) (subject) (predicate)

Em ơ i Ba Lan mùa tuyết tan

Phụ ngữ Chủ ngữ Vị ngữ

(adjunct) (subject) (predicate)

(D Q Ban, 1987:198)

Unlike D Q Ban, N M Thuyết & N V Hiệp (1998) distinguish between principle

parts of the sentence (subject and predicate) and secondary elements, topic (khởi ngữ),

modality (tình thái) adjunct (phụ ngữ) and adverbial (trạng ngữ) Additionally, theydefine that predicate is a part of the nucleus of sentence in front of which we can

complete the functional words such as đã, s , ang, không ẽ, đang, không đang, không (For more details, see N.

M Thuyet & N V Hiep, 1998)

2.2.3 Basic clause patterns

Traditionally, there are seven basic clause patterns in English The patterns differ onthe basis of what type of complement structure they have within the predicate

+ Pattern one: no verb complement (SVA)

My father is in New York.

S V intens A place

+ Pattern two: direct object verb complement (SVO)

Peter kicked the ball.

S V monotrans O d

+ Pattern three: indirect and direct object verb complement (SVOO)

Mary s husband’ gave her a diamond ring

S V complex trans O i O d

+ Pattern four: predicate verb complement (SVC)

Mary is a doctor

S V intens C s

+ Pattern five: (SVOA)

Mary took the children to the zoo.

S V complex trans O d A place

+ Pattern six: (SVOA)

They elected him the leader.

From the point of view of logico-semantics, a sentence is defined as expressing ‘a state

of affairs’ (Quirk et al 1985; Van Valin& Lappolla 1997; T V Ch×nh & N H Le

1963), ‘a proposition’ (Delahunty & Garvey 1994; Jacobs 1995; T T Kim 1941) or ‘a

relatively complete thought’ (Bytrov et al 1975; D Q Ban 1987)

In Delahunty & Garvey (1994), a sentence may ‘express one or more propositions’ Aproposition is a claim which is specific enough to be evaluated as true or false

According to Quirk et al (1985), in terms of meaning, every clause describes an event

or state in which a number of participants (normally one, two, or three) are involved

Take an example of The boy kicked the ball The sentence contains a verb phrase

describing the nature of the action itself, a subject denoting an Agentive participant (or

“doer”), and a direct object denoting an affected participant (or “victim”)

The semantic elements in a sentence include: agentive, affected, recipient, attribute,disjunct, adjunct, and conjunct

The Agentive is the most typical role of a subject; that is, the animate being

instigating or causing the happening denoted by the verb

She opened the door

The affected is the most typical function of the direct object; it is a participant

(animate or inanimate) which does not cause the happening denoted by the verb,but is directly involved in some other ways

Kate has just broken a plate.

The recipient is the most typical function of the indirect object; it is the

animate being passively implicated by the happening or state

Her husband gave her a diamond ring.

The attribute is the function of object complement or subject complement.

Her brother grew happier.

I prefer my coffee black.

Based on semantic criterion, the subject and object are classified into many types:agentive and instrumental subject, recipient subject, locative and temporal subject,

affected object, effected object, locative object, etc For more details, see Quirk et al.

(1976); Van Valin & Lappolla (1997)

Similarly, T V Chinh & N H Le (1963) also define sentence as a linguistic formexpressing one or more than one state of affairs A state of affairs is an event, action or

a state in which a participant (person/thing) functions as the subject For example, inthe two states of affairs

T«i ®i xem h¸t

¸o anh dµi qu¸

‘T«i’ is the subject of ‘®i xem h¸t’ and ‘¸o anh’ is the subject of ‘dµi qu¸’ A sentencewhich expresses a state of affairs is a simple sentence; a sentence expressing more thanone state of affairs is a complex sentence

According to D Q Ban (1987), the subject, in semantic relation to the predicate, can function as agentive subject (chủ ngữ tác động), instrumental subject (chủ ngữ phương

tiện), locative subject (chủ ngữ chỉ vị trí), etc

Anh Long suy nghĩ miên man

Xe này chở than

Vườn ông trồng toàn những cỏ

(D Q Ban, 1987:125-126)

Similarly, the predicate is classified into: relational predicate (vị ngữ chỉ quan hệ),

resultive predicate (vị ngữ chỉ hệ quả), active predicate (vị ngữ chỉ hoạt động), etc

Bây giờ thì tuổi già đã đến.

Từ trong bụi rậm vụt chạy ra hai con thỏ.

Tuy nghèo nhưng anh ấy rất tốt bụng.

(D Q Ban, 1987:174)

2.4 Communicative criteria

According to the purpose of the utterance, sentences can be categorized into fourkinds

+ The declarative sentence: A declarative sentence states a fact in the affirmative or

negative form In a declarative sentence, the subject precedes the predicate It isgenerally pronounced with a falling intonation

I am going home They don t get on well with each other.’

Thời tiết hôm nay rất đẹp.

Đêm qua tôi không ngủ được.

In English, the most common negation of a simple sentence is accomplished by

inserting not between the operator and the predication Similarly, negation in Vietnamese sentence often established by adding không before the predication

+ An interrogative sentence is commonly used to request information English

interrogative sentences can be subclassified into four types: yes/no question, question, alternative questions and tag questions Examples for each type are given

wh-below, respectively

Do you like art?

Who is the man over there?

Do you live in town or in the countryside?

She isn t married, is she?’

An interrogative in Vietnamese can be established with interrogative pronoun (ai, gì, nào, thế nào, sao, bây giờ, ở đâu, ), the alternative word “…), the alternative word “ hay”, interrogative word

(có…không, chưa, phải không, à) or rising intonation

Sao anh về muộn thế?

Cậu thích đọc truyên ngắn phải không?

Cụ Ba có nhà hay không?

Anh sống ở đây?

(Lª CËn et al 1983)

+ An exclamatory sentence expresses some kind of emotion or feeling It is generally

a more emphatic form of statement English exclamatory often begins with the words

What and How.

How beautiful she is!

What an awful day!

Vietnamese exclamatory is formed by various particle words (ô, ôi, ơi là, nhỉ, ư, thật, thay, quá, ghê, thế, dường nào, biết, xiết, biết bao, etc).

Bài toán này khó thật!

Sao mà chán thế!

+ An imperative sentence is ordinarily used to make a demand, a request, an

invitation, etc It serves to induce a person to do something

Do your homework!

Don t come closer!’

Hãy đứng dậy! = Đứng dậy! = Đứng dậy đi!

Đừng có gây ồn! = Không đự¬c gây ồn!

2.5 Phonological and orthographic criteria

From the point of view of phonology/prosody, a clause can be recognized by intonation

or a terminal pause Some linguists define a sentence as a linear sequence of wordsspoken with ending intonation and written with ending punctuation (Thompson 1985;

H T Phien 1980; D Q Ban 1987) Intonation is a criterion to recognize sentenceelements, boundary between phrases, boundary between clauses and sentences; it canalso help to distinguish different types of sentence For example, English statementsare commonly recognized by falling intonation at the end of the sentence Questions

(by no mean wh-questions) are often recognized by rising intonation (Quirk et al.

1973; Roach 1983; Huddleston 1984)

She seemed unhappy

Are you happy?

In some languages, Vietnamese for instance, intonation changing helps to formdifferent types of sentences

Anh Ba ®i phè (statement)

Anh Ba ®i phè? (question)

Anh Ba ®i phè! (exclamation)

Anh Ba, ®i phè! (imperative)

(Lª CËn et al 1983)

Orthographically, a sentence can be recognized by an initial capital letter and the

presence of the ending punctuation In Quirk et al (1973), successive units form a

hierarchy as follows:

- The dependent units in sentence structure (usually phrases or clauses) separated

by a comma (,)

- The independent units (usually clauses) separated by a semicolon (;)

- The sentences separated by a period (.) and a following capital

Additionally, types of sentence are variously punctuated A statement often ends with

a full stop (a period) while a question can be punctuated with a question mark (?) and

an explanative can be orthographically recognized by an exclamation mark (!)

2.6 Summary

In summary, this chapter has provided an investigation into how the simple sentence isconceptualized and described in traditional grammar Our generalization concentratesmainly on the commonest issues of the sentence, including the definition of sentence,classification of sentence, defining sentence components and setting up the basicsentence patterns The sentence is defined and recognized according to various criteria,which reflects many aspects of language, both functional and formal However, one ofthe problems with the sentence analyzed under the traditional analytic framework isthat the criteria to define and recognize this unit seem to be isolated from each other,and therefore,‘they seem to lack of systematicity’ (H V Van) In the next chapter, wewill investigate how the clause – the counterpart of simple sentence - is described inSFG

mostly based on the following publications: Hoµng Van Van (2001) and DiÖp Quang Ban (2004) These are the valuable referential material sources in which the clause in

Vietnamese is described basing on Halliday’s systemic functional framework

3.2 Clause- the crucial unit in systemic functional grammar

This chapter concerns with clause – the grammatical category important not to onlyEnglish but also to any other languages (Halliday & Matthiessen, forthcoming; H V.Van, 2002) Despite of its important status, in traditional grammar, clause is taken aspart of the complex or compound sentence, or it is “subsumed under the notion ofsimple sentence” (H V Van, 2002) In systemic functional grammar, clause is

considered the fundamental unit of grammatical organization because it is at the rank

of the clause that we can begin to talk about how things exist, how things happen andhow people feel in the world around us It is also at the rank of the clause that weusually use language to interact with others Another reason to give clause theimportant status in systemic functional grammar is that it can be approached from

different angles: strata, rank, and metafunction In other words, it can be recognized

and defined “from above” (semantic dimension), “from around” (lexcio grammaticaldimension) and “from below” (morphological and phonological dimension) For moredetails, see Halliday and Matthiessen (forthcoming), H V Van (2002)

3.3 Three ways of interpreting clause

3.3.1 Clause as representation: experiential metafunction

A fundamental property of language is that it enables us to conceptualize and describeour experience, whether of the outer world (things, events, qualities, ect.) or innerworld of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions When language is viewed from thisperspective, it focuses primarily on the “content” of the message It is the role of the

experiential perspective in the grammar that accounts for this function of language In

performing experiential function, language reflects our view of the world as consisting

of “going-on” (verbs) involving things (nouns) and going on against background ofplace, time, manner, etc (adverbials) The clause, as a significant grammatical unit,permits us to encode all these patterns of experience The experiential meaning of theclause is realized through the Transitivity structure

3.3.1.1 Transitivity

Transitivity is a resource for interpreting our experience in terms of configurations of

a Process, Participant, and Circumstance.

The Process is typically expressed – or realized – by the verbal group in the clause,

and is the central component of the message from the experiential perspective It can

be state, an action, an event, a transition or change of state, a climatic phenomenon, a

process of sensing, saying, behaving or simply existing The term “process” is used torefer in general sense to all these types.

The Participant is normally realized by a nominal group A major clause might

include one or more than one participant The entities represented by participants can

be persons, objects, or abstractions; they can be the Agent of the action or be affected

by it, benefit from it or receive its effects

The Circumstances, which are typically realized by adverbial groups or prepositional

phrases, reflect “back ground” function in the clause, including expressions of time,place, manner, means, cause, condition, concession, accompaniment and role.Circumstances are often optional; in some cases they may be more or less obligatory to

be included

The examples below provide a tripartite model of Transitivity in the clause

Participant Process Circumstance Circumstance

Figure3-1 (a): English clause as process, participant and circumstances

Tham thể

(Participant)

Quá trình (Process)

Tham thể ( Participant)

Chu cảnh (Circumstance)

nhóm danh từ

(Nominal group)

nhóm động từ(Verbal group)

nhóm danh từ(Nominal group)

cụm giới từ(Prepositional phrase)

(Source: D Q Ban, 2004: 37)

Figure 3-1 (b): Vietnamese clause as process, participant and circumstances

The model of process, participant, and circumstance is the general frame to matchstructural and functional features However, we need a more delicate set of categories

to interpret the grammar of the clause because the concepts of the process, participantand circumstance are too general to explain much thoroughly It is necessary for us torecognize functions which are more specific and may differ according to the type of